[en] The poetry book Dorp zonder ouders by the Flemish catholic priest Anton van Wilderode was fiercely duscussed by leftist literary critics. Some of them rejected the book outright, others expressed their admiration, while distancing themselves from the author's ideological position. The present book chapter claims that these mixed reactions are at least partly elicited by the author's own agency, more specifically by his rigid and self-destructive defence of inadmissible reactionary views.